True Brew

Linus Hall, EMBA'00, taps into the craft brewing market at Yazoo

Linus Hall is the Owner of Yazoo Brewing Co., which produces several different beers, including the Pale Ale pictured here on the bottling line.

Running a craft brewery requires a personal touch, but few pour themselves into the job like Linus Hall. His Nashville-based Yazoo Brewing Co., which has expanded its reach across the Southeast since opening in 2003, is as much a testament to his handcrafted approach to beer making as it is to the larger aesthetic and philosophy that guide his decisions as a business owner.

“You go down the beer aisle of any grocery store, and it’s mostly run-of-the-mill brands in boring metallic blue cans,” he says. “We try to go in the opposite direction with our brewery by being offbeat and memorable.”

Named for the river that winds its way past Hall’s hometown of Vicksburg, Miss., Yazoo produces nine different types of beer, including a rotating seasonal variety. Several of them have labels featuring paintings by his wife, Lila. “Even though we ended up in Nashville, we wanted to reflect our Mississippi roots in our name and image,” he says. “It’s about capturing that Delta folk-art feel.”

Distinctive as it is, the branding explains only part of Yazoo’s growing popularity. From the outset Hall knew that success hinged not only on the quality of his beer, for which he turned to the American Brewer’s Guild for a craft-brewing course, but also on the quality of his business plan. For the latter he enrolled in the Vanderbilt Executive MBA program, which he says gave him a strong foundation in strategy and operations, as well as a better understanding of what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

Nearly 10 years into it, Hall still gets a heady feeling from being in charge of the business he’s built from the ground up. It’s not unlike the warm sense of satisfaction that his patrons feel after sampling one of Yazoo’s fresh drafts.

“If you don’t get a thrill from what you’re doing, you’re not going to make it,” he says. “For me that thrill is walking into the taproom on a busy night and seeing customers enjoying our beer and having great conversations.

Yazoo makes great beers and is a wonderful corporate citizen here in Nashville. I especially appreciate their Bells Bend Preservation Ale, made from hops grown here in the Bells Bend area of Nashville.